A Debate with a Bircher: Part 3

It has never ceased to amaze observers of
conspiracy theories that so much of the proof that is given for the stated plot
is so far outside of the usual conventions of rational thought. Such is the case with
*all* of the evidence regarding conspiracy theories: regardless of
author, regardless of source, regardless how convincing the prima face “evidence”
that is given. Conspiracy theories are, by definition, entirely fabricated, either
by cultural myth, overgeneralization presented as fact (both of which
overlap with each other much of the time), selective bias, or by the addition of obviously fabricated
evidence in one form or another. Sliced, diced, chopped or minced, it is still fabricated.

For the present study, recall that in part one of
the debate with John Quayle — a chapter leader of the John Birch Society — that I made a specific request
of him to, “Name your book, name your page number, name your reference source: the
evidence must be verifiable.” In response, John cited Ted Flynn’s book,

Hope
of the Wicked, among others. He then returned the
challenge back to me saying, “I could go on
forever. Pick anyone, any page you like…….” The conversation from
there continued down an alternate path toward an article written by me about the
credibility of conspiracy theory author Antony Sutton. What happened, as you have read, is
that John Quayle ran headlong into a stone wall and realized that his theory had
been obviously refuted completely. He refused to acknowledge the obvious
error of Sutton’s conspiracy theory and instead changed the subject. From there the debate continued
for the next couple of weeks.

But instead of letting the debate
stand as you see it, I decided to ask an alternative question for part 3 of this debate: what if John Quayle had
taken the bait to, “Name your book, name your page number, name your reference
source?” Would the debate have turned out in John’s favor?
Would he really have stumbled me onto a coming global apocalypse as Birch
doctrine so eloquently reveals? Hardly: John ran into intellectual
armageddon
when I pointed him to an article by me he knew he could not defend, and it would have been even worse had he followed the original path toward Ted Flynn’sHope of the Wicked as we will see. So, for part three of the great
debate, I decided to continue down the
original path of the debate just to let you
see what would have happened had John Quayle chosen to accept my challenge
regarding Ted Flynn’s credibility. What follows is the result of
my investigation. It is of significant note here that any of the
sources that John Quayle named as part of his response to my challenge in part
one of this debate could be substituted here. I chose Ted Flynn’s Hope
of the Wicked for part three of this debate mostly because of my
unfamiliarity with his work, the newest of those mentioned in John Quayle’s
response. Additionally, there is a chapter in Flynn’s text that covers the
Federal Reserve, a subject that I am mostly familiar with since I have written
on the subject before.

There are three passages in Ted Flynn’s text that
will be exposed within the confines of this part of the debate. I will
show conclusively that had John continued down the original path of the debate,
he would have run into the same wall that he ran into with the Sutton article
that he decided he could not defend, in effect proving conclusively that it is
impossible to sustain the notion of global plot-ness he and others claim to have
found. The first passage comes from part one
of the debate, in which I challenged
one of Ted Flynn’s
quotes in the first chapter of his book. From that first chapter I cited a quote from Flynn that was obviously
fabricated. John Quayle then challenged me in the ensuing exchange to
offer proof positive that the quote was indeed fake. The conversation
ended before I was able to give an account of the proof that John Quayle asked
for. The fabricated quote is as follows, as quoted by Flynn on page 4:

“So
you see…the world is governed by very different
personages from
what is imagined by those who are not behind the
scenes.”2

Conspiracy theorists adore quotes like this to
make their case for global plot-ness. In this particular
quote, neither John Quayle nor Ted Flynn could escape from their apparent conundrum. In point of fact, the quote is from a famous 1844 novel with the title,Coningsby,
or The New Generation by Benjamin Disraeli, who would later become the Prime
Minister of Britain. The quote resides on page
169 (at least in the version that I checked — there are several), and therein
lies the fabricated nature of the quote: it is contained within a known work of
fiction — a novel for Pete’s sake! Flynn even cited it as such in his endnote. Let
me get this straight here: Ted Flynn deliberately quotes what he knows and

acknowledges himself as a known work of fiction as “evidence” for a
real life conspiracy. As conspiracy theorists love to argue the point, “It’s a novel, true,
but Disraeli is telling the truth here,” or so the argument would go.
My goodness! If this isn’t intellectual vacancy I don’t know what it is; we are somehow asked to
believe that an entire book is a work of fantasy with the exception of a single
sentence conveniently lifted from the text. The level of self deception required for such an obviously
ridiculous rationalization simply boggles the mind. But this is not the
only point to be made regarding the quote from the Disraeli novel; believe it or
not Flynn’s research degenerates from here.

Immediately after the Disreali quote in Flynn’s text on page 4, the following endnote can be accessed
in the back of Flynn’s book on page 450. It is quoted below exactly as it appears in
Flynn’s endnotes to chapter one:

As you can readily see, William T. Still is cited
here who, in turn, cites W. Cleon Skousen as the original source for the Disraeli
quote
that is used in Flynn’s text. The problem with the passage lies with William T. Still’s
citation here: the quote is not found in Skousen’s text on the cited page.

Had Ted Flynn bothered to check his sources he would have known this.
Indeed as far as I can tell, the quote is not found *anywhere* in
Skousen’s text at all. This is precisely the kind of incompetent research that
peppers Flynn’s text from beginning to end, directly mirroring the “bulletproof”
evidence that was exposed during the debate with John Quayle; Flynn simply chose to believe the
lie he had been told and never bothered to seriously investigate either the claims or
the sources.

The second of the three passages I will expose
regarding Ted Flynn’s Hope of the Wicked is derived from page 207.
It reads as follows:

“London, June 25th, 1863

Messrs. Ikelheimer, Morton and Vandergould

No 3 Wall Street., New York, USA

Dear Sirs: A Mr. John Sherman has Written
us from a town in Ohio, U.S.A., as to the profits that may be made in the
National Banking Business under a recent act of your Congress, a copy of which
act accompanied this letter. Apparently this act has been drawn upon the
plan formulated here last summer by the British Bankers Association and by that Association
recommended to our American friends as one that if enacted into law, would prove
highly profitable to the banking fraternity throughout the world. (The
small number of people who can understand the system, says Mr. Sherman, will
either be so attracted by the profits to be attained from it, or so dependent on
the favours it offers, that they will not oppose it;) One the other hand, the
great body of the people, mentally incapable of comprehending the tremendous
advantages that capital derives from the system, will bear its burdens without
complaint and perhaps without even suspecting that the system is inimical to
their interests. Please advise us fully as to this matter…”

Superficially, of course, the statement is a
damaging piece of evidence for the conspiracy crowd. If true it would be
difficult for any non-conspiracy theorist to adequately explain. Fortunately, however,
the statement is a classic piece of the real conspiracy theory puzzle: The
entire letter was deliberately fabricated.Had Ted Flynn checked the public
papers of John Sherman to verify the authenticity of the alleged letter,
available through the Ohio Historical Society, he would have quickly found that
John Sherman had no contact at all with London in 1863 as the letter
suggests. Further, there is no mention anywhere in John Sherman’s papers
of anyone with any of the three names mentioned in the beginning of the alleged
letter. The only possible conclusion is that the entire letter was a
fabrication.

Again, just as in the prior quote from the
Disraeli novel, this is just the tip of the iceberg.
Flynn’s text cites the following endnote to the above letter on page 468:

“Letter quoted in Fr. Charles E. Coughlin’s Money!
Questions & Answers, p. 170, and quoted in part by Bob Adelman, ‘The
Federal Reserve System,’ a dossier in the review The New American,
27.X.1986, p. 32, in de Lassus.”

Now that we have all of the information available
from Flynn’s text, the serious investigator can see the full extent of Flynn’s incompetence.
First of all, Father Charles Coughlin
is well known as one of the twentieth century’s most vicious anti-Semites.

I dare say there is not a research librarian in the entire United States who has
not heard the name, and few if any library databases that exist that will not
reveal results from “Charles Coughlin” having been entered as a search term.
Few if any historical works of the late 1930’s would fail to cover Father
Coughlin’s anti-Semitic antics, he is mentioned in countless historical
journals, several biographies, dissertations and theses too numerous to count,
and virtually everywhere in the history of twentieth century anti-Semitism.
In short, the name is impossible to miss.

Second, Father Coughlin prefaces the alleged
letter with the following:

“Rothschilds, International Bankers made the
following commitment:”

Here we go again. The term
“International Bankers” made by Coughlin was an obvious reference to a
vicious anti-Semitic slur during the 1930’s. Indeed, the term had been
around for centuries, and eventually came to be recognized as distinctively anti-Semitic
well before the 1900’s. The term denoted a leach,
filcher or a corporate thief. As a derogatory term, it was the modern
equivalent of the n-word, now in the early twenty-first century increasingly becoming culturally unacceptable to
say or to write in full. Again, historically impossible for author Ted
Flynn to miss.

Third, as part of the alleged correspondence that
was quoted in Coughlin’s text, which covers a letter from London (the fabricated
letter above) and a return letter from New York which has an attachment, it is
difficult to imagine that Flynn could have missed the obvious ignorance of
Coughlin’s alleged correspondence: even at first glance the alleged letters and
the attachment are not written by someone with knowledge of banking practice. Coughlin’s ignorance is rather something of a
joke from the middle of page 170 through page 175 of his text. Again, impossible to
miss, even from a purely grammatical or vocabulary standpoint: businessmen just
don’t write letters like this: the alleged letters and attachment simply
*scream* fabrication, so much so that that is precisely the reason I decided to investigate further.

Fourth, Flynn never bothered to check Father
Coughlin’s source for this information, or his bibliography. Had he done
so he would have found that there is no source given for the alleged letters and
attachment found on pages 170 through page 175 of Coughlin’s text.

Fifth, the alleged attachment to
the letter has, at the very end, the following paragraph exactly as it
appears in Coughlin’s text:

“Requesting that you will regard this
circular as strictly confidential and soliciting any favors in our line that you
may have to extend, we are,

Most respectfully yours,

“Ikelheimer, Morton and Vandergould.”

What is stunning is that Flynn’s research
somehow missed the obvious question that a serious investigator would have
asked, namely just how was it that Father Coughlin came in contact with the
“strictly confidential” document that somehow exposes the global plot.
Any serious researcher would have asked some pointed questions before continuing
down a path that would lead to the destruction of his own credibility.

Sixth, lest there be any doubt that the letter in
question was deliberately fabricated, I took the liberty of making a few phone
calls to the New York Public Library and the New York Historical Society to
check to see if some of the pieces of the letter could be independently
verified. As it turns out, my suspicions were in fact confirmed; New York City
directories of the years 1862 – 1864 reveal that there was no one with the name
of Ikelheimer who either resided at or who had a business at number 3 Wall Street
with that name during those three years in New York City. The closest
matches to that name are 3: the first of which comes from the 1862-1863 directory, reporting that there was
an Isaac Igelheimer of 132 1/2 Rivington Street, who was registered as a tailor;
the second close match comes from the 1863-1864 directory which lists an Emanuel Ikelheimer of 103 Prince Street, who is not listed
with a vocation; and a third listing which reports an Isaac Ickelheimer who resided at 15 Maiden Street, an
importer who also resided in Europe who kept a second home in New York City.
The name of Morton was too common to be of any use as a tool for investigating
further, but the uncommon name of Vandergould did in fact yield similar results:
there was no registered person with the name of Vandergould who resided at or
who had a business at number 3 Wall Street during the year in question. The evidence is thorough and
conclusive: there was no business in New York City with the name that is
associated with the letters and attachment, nor was there any resident who
occupied the address at number 3 Wall Street with any of the names given in the
letters and attachment. In short, the letter was inescapably fabricated.

Seventh, as noted earlier, Flynn cited Bob
Adelman as another source for the passage written by Father Coughlin. The
endnote quoted above states clearly that the passage was quoted in part in an
article appearing in The New American, the official journal of the John
Birch Society. Of interesting note here is that Adelman and The New
American quoted the same lie Flynn did without ever verifying the
authenticity of the alleged letter in Father Coughlin’s book. It’s a clear
cut case of the John Birch Society willingly printing whatever ends up in print
from the staff of The New American without the slightest hint of
editorial responsibility. Even a quick skim of the article by Adelman
reveals several historical stupidities and several more openly fabricated
quotes: a virtual treasure trove of conspiratorial irresponsibility and an
all-too-willing “amen” from the conspiracy crowd.

The third passage to be exposed here in Flynn’s
text comes from page 226. The following is a well known quote in American
conspiracy lore from that page:

“Despite my views about the value to society
of greater publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion, near
the close of 1910, when I was as secretive–indeed, as furtive–as any
conspirator…I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret
expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what
eventually became the Federal Reserve System…

We were told to leave our last names behind
us. We were told, further, that we should avoid dining together on the
night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time and as
unobtrusively as possible to the railroad terminal on the New Jersey side of the
Hudson, where Senator Aldrich’s private car would be in readiness, attached to
the rear end of a train for the ride south…

Once aboard the private car we began to observe
the taboo that had been fixed on last names. We addressed one another as
‘Ben,’ ‘Paul,’ ‘Nelson,’ ‘Abe’�it is Abraham Piatt Andrew. Davison and I
adopted even deeper disguises, abandoning our first names. On the theory
that we were always right, he became Wilbur and I became Orville, after those
two aviation pioneers, the Wright brothers…

The servants and train crew may have known the
identities of one or two of us, but they did not know all, and it was the name
of all printed together that would have made our mysterious journey significant
in Washington, in Wall Street, even London. Discovery, we knew, simply
must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it
were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and
written a banking bill, that would have no chance whatever of passage by
Congress.”

On its face, the passage is a tacit admission of
some sort of conspiracy. Surely you would think there could not possibly
be an answer to this passage; lord have mercy, it even *states* the
conspiracy! Fortunately, for the serious investigator, the more incontrovertible
the “evidence” for the great plot, the more compelling the challenge
to expose the fraudulent research. The above was no different. It
was the very “bulletproof” nature of the quote that forced me, yes, *beyond my free will* to investigate further. It was a temptation too
much for a mere mortal as I to bear, an enticement I could not suppress in this
life!!

As it turns out, there are several passages
that Flynn’s research omitted, omissions that destroy any hope
of some sort of nutty conspiracy as Flynn and the John Birch Society suggest. In order to
let you see the omissions in their proper context, I will re-quote the above
quotation in Flynn’s text, this time with the passages that were omitted by
Flynn’s research. Where Flynn’s omissions occur, some of which are
contained in the very same paragraph that he quoted, these will be italicized in
order to set them apart from the quotation that Flynn gave. Each omission
will be given in the chronological order in which they appear in the actual
article he cited as a source (Flynn cited both the article and a chapter in a
book of the same author in his endnote). This
will give you a much better feel of the context of the entirety of the
article. The entire article will not be quoted here, only the relevant
passages that confirm or deny any conspiracy as Flynn suggested.

First, this opening passage by Flynn omits the
very section of the paragraph that obliterates his conspiracy theory. The
words in italics are what Flynn omitted in his text:

“Despite my views about the value to society
of greater publicity for the affairs of corporations, there was an occasion, near
the close of 1910, when I was as secretive�indeed, as furtive�as any conspirator. None of us who
participated felt that we were conspirators; on the contrary, we felt we were
engaged in a patriotic work. We were trying to plan a mechanism that
would correct the weaknesses of our banking system as revealed under the
strains and pressures of the panic of 1907. I do not feel it is any exaggeration to speak of our secret
expedition to Jekyll Island as the occasion of the actual conception of what
eventually became the Federal Reserve System…”

Notice that the omitted section is right in the
middle of the stated paragraph. It is the *only* part of the paragraph
that was omitted. The paragraph even *states* that it was not a
conspiracy, that they were “trying to plan a mechanism that would correct
the weaknesses of our banking system…” Clearly, this speaks of
deliberate, willful deception here on the part of Ted Flynn’s research.

Second, the very next paragraph in the article was omitted in
its entirety in Flynn’s text. The stated paragraph gives the context for
the meeting at Jekyll Island:

“Congress, after 1907, had realized that something
had to be done to strengthen our banking system. To provide itself with a
better understanding of the problem, there had been appointed a joint commission of twenty-five members of both houses, under the chairmanship of
Senator Aldrich, who was, on the whole, the best informed and the most dominant
man in Congress on financial measures. This group had gone to Europe, had interviewed bankers and the heads of the central banks, and then, after a
pleasant summer, they had returned to the United States without a definite idea
of what they ought to do. Senator Aldrich did not know what they ought to
do, either, although he really had been working hard for two years.”

As you can see, the conspiratorial thesis has
been completely destroyed by the paragraph. Congress was in fact doing the
very thing they were elected to do, namely straighten out the banking mess that
was in vogue at the time. There is no mention here of the plot that Flynn claims is there.

Third, the following three sections of text were
omitted in Flynn’s text, two of which are full paragraphs. Here again, in
these passages there is a clear context of the political background to the
events of the Jekyll Island expedition:

“Aldrich, I was informed, believed in
some sort of centralization, but not in the establishment of a central bank
such as France had. Mr. Stillman also reported to me that in his talk
with Senator Aldrich he himself had not expressed any views, except as he had
impressed on the senator his belief in the necessity of not being too much
influenced by �our Wall Street point of view.

But would the electorate have believed that?
I question their ability to do so. Just to give you a faint idea:
Senator Aldrich was the father-in-law of John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and himself
a very rich man. Once I had written to Woodrow Wilson at Princeton,
inviting him to speak at a dinner. Wishing to impress him with the
importance of the occasion. I had mentioned that Senator Aldrich also
had been invited to speak. My friend Doctor Wilson had astonished me by
replying that he could not bring himself to speak on the same platform with
Senator Aldrich. He did come and make a speech, however, after I had
reported that Mr. Aldrich�s health would prevent him from appearing.

Now then, fancy what sort of headlines might have appeared over a story that
Aldrich was conferring about new money legislation with a Morgan partner and
the president of the biggest bank…

As the time for the assembling of Congress
drew near, Senator Aldrich became increasingly concerned about the report he
must write on behalf of the joint monetary commission; likewise, there ought
to be, he knew, a bill to present to the new Congress, and none had been
drafted. This was how it happened that a group of us went with him to
the Jekyl Island Club on the coast of Georgia.”

Hardly a conspiratorial plot, the expedition to
Jekyll Island was the only way to get the job done without political
distraction, and there was a clear mandate to do *something* to fix the
broken banking system that was in place at the time. Note
as well that there is no global conspiracy ever mentioned that Flynn says he
somehow found.

Fourth, the next omitted passage is a
half-paragraph that was deliberately cut from Flynn’s text. It is the next
paragraph that appears in the article. The brackets surrounding the word “side” are
inserted here because in the original article text, the word “littoral” was
used in its place:

“Since it would be fatal to Senator
Aldrich�s plan to have it known that he was calling on anybody from Wall
Street to help him in preparing his report and bill, precautions were taken
that would have delighted the heart of James Stillman. Those who had
been asked to go were Henry Davison, Paul Warburg, Ben Strong, and
myself. From Washington came A. Piatt Andrew, Jr., who was then an
Assistant Secretary of the Treasury, and who now is a member of Congress from
Massachusetts. We were told to leave our last names behind
us. We were told, further, that we should avoid dining together on the
night of our departure. We were instructed to come one at a time and as
unobtrusively as possible to the railroad terminal on the New Jersey [ side] of the
Hudson, where Senator Aldrich’s private car would be in readiness, attached to
the rear end of a train for the ride south.”

What is obvious here again is that it is
clearly beyond question that Flynn knew precisely what he was doing when he
omitted the passage in question. The passage strikes at the very core of
the conspiracy theory thesis by explaining the political impossibility of
certifiable experts adding their expertise to the discussion and later
legislation.

Fifth, yet another half-paragraph was omitted by Flynn’s
research. In this case, it leaves no room whatsoever for any
ridiculous plot that he claims to have found. It is preceded below by
the next chronological paragraph that appeared in the article. Note that the word Abram is bracketed to
denote a change from the original text of the article, i.e., Abram became
Abraham thanks to Flynn’s lack of detail:

“Once aboard the private car we began to observe
the taboo that had been fixed on last names. We addressed one another as
‘Ben,’ ‘Paul,’ ‘Nelson,’ ‘Abe’�it is [Abram] Piatt Andrew. Davison and I
adopted even deeper disguises, abandoning our first names. On the theory
that we were always right, he became Wilbur and I became Orville, after those
two aviation pioneers, the Wright brothers.

The servants and train crew may have known the
identities of one or two of us, but they did not know all, and it was the name
of all printed together that would have made our mysterious journey significant
in Washington, in Wall Street, even London. Discovery, we knew, simply
must not happen, or else all our time and effort would be wasted. If it
were to be exposed publicly that our particular group had got together and
written a banking bill, that would have no chance whatever of passage by
Congress. Yet, who was there in Congress who might have drafted a sound
piece of legislation dealing with the technical banking problem with which we
were concerned?Indeed, there
were surprisingly few bankers, besides those of us who had been called
together, who had given the special matters under consideration any thorough
study whatever.Most bankers were
reluctant to accept any change; George Baker was.”

Here we go again. The only part of the
paragraph that was omitted by Flynn was the part that didn’t agree with his
conspiracy theory. And here again the evidence points to a deliberate act
of deception: it is inconceivable that he could have missed the passage.

Sixth, the next omitted paragraph specifically
*states* that there was no Wall Street chicanery, yet Flynn deliberately stated
otherwise. Yet again there is no hope at all for sustaining his
conspiratorial plot. It was nothing more than well educated men who knew
the issues well enough to do something about it, and who also knew that public
perception gets in the way of serious political change. Here is the paragraph
in question:

“Congress was about to meet, but on a
Saturday we got word in New York that Senator Aldrich was ill� too ill to
write as appropriate document to accompany his plan. Ben Strong and I
went on to Washington and together we prepared that report. If what we
had done then had been made known publicly, the effort would have been
denounced as a piece of Wall Street chicanery, which it certainly was not.
Aldrich never was a man to be a mere servant of the so-called money interests.

He was a conscientious, public-spirited man. He had called on the four
of us who had Wall Street addresses because he knew that we had for years been
studying aspects of the problem with which it was his public duty to deal.”

The passage is truly amazing in its condemnation
of Flynn’s conspiracy theory, yet Flynn’s research somehow missed the
transparently obvious; It was Senator Aldrich’s duty to deal with the current
banking crisis, and he would have been negligent had he not done so.

In fairness to Ted Flynn, it should be noted here
that there is another, far more likely explanation for what happened with the
above passages of text from the Vanderlip article during the research process while Flynn
was writing his book. Let me explain further. What happens with conspiracy theories is that author
“A” will write a passage in his text, place a footnote or endnote as a
reference source for the passage, then move on with the conspiratorial
narrative. This is no different than any other work of non-fiction: this
is merely standard operating procedure. Author “B” on the other
hand, will assume that the passage is correct, cite the same passage, and never
bother to check to see if the passage had anything at all to do with a
verifiable conspiracy. It is here where conspiracy theories are patently
different than other works of non-fiction. *At no point ever* do
conspiracy theorists verify the authenticity of the original passage, nor is
there any attempt to verify context. So, if a passage turns out to be
fabricated or grossly distorted, precisely as *all three examples* in part 3 of
this debate, no conspiracy theorist will ever likely have knowledge of it.

This is much more likely the scenario that happened with Flynn’s research.
In point of fact, G. Edward Griffin, a well known author and editor of John
Birch Society publications, deliberately lied about the passage in question,
then Flynn simply passed on the lie all too willingly while citing Griffin as
the original source. In the case of Griffin’s research, there are no other
options: Griffin did not cite another author as the source for the passage that
his text quoted. In failing to do so, the ultimate responsibility for lying
stops at the desk of Griffin alone. But lets not let Flynn and other
conspiracy theorists off the hook so easily either. All who write this
conspiracy theory nonsense had at one point a responsibility to verify any given
passage in question. They willingly shunned that public responsibility and
aided a lie by way of omission. If this were an intellectual crime it
would be likely classified as criminal negligence.

In the end, what is telling about conspiracy
theories is that these three examples from Ted Flynn’s Hope of the Wicked are the
norm. The three examples given from Flynn’s text above were not chosen because I had knowledge of
their context, prior research by myself or someone else, or any other
investigative criteria. They were chosen almost exclusively on a whim: I
simply felt like it! What is really sad here is that the results would
not have been any different had I chosen any other book written by the John
Birch Society, ministries who tout this sort of thing as part of a twisted
version of Bible prophecy, or the anti-government militia or patriot
movements. This is what conspiracy theories are, pure and simple: they are
very much defined by the phenomenon you have seen here. As earlier
mentioned, the reason I decided to write part 3 of this debate with a chapter
leader of the John Birch Society was to prove conclusively that had John Quayle
chosen to continue down the original path of the debate, he still would have
been rebuffed completely. Having destroyed Ted Flynn’s credibility
conclusively here completes that process without reservation. As to any public
admissions of error by John Quayle, Ted Flynn or the John Birch Society, it is
fair to say that each will likely continue down the path of deception rather
than acknowledge this level of irresponsibility. Testament indeed to the
venomous nature of this most hideous of doctrines.